Friday, December 7, 2012

Example of the Right Wing’s Excessive Influence

Consider
the vote in the Senate early this week to ratify a United Nations Treaty that
would have established a standard of care for disabled people around the world.
The treaty was based on the law as it exists in the United States and would
have been a tremendous step forward in urging such care globally. A two-thirds
majority was needed to ratify the treaty. Here’s why it failed.

by Charlie
Leck

The Senate
listened courteously to one of its former greats this week. Bob Dole was
brought before them in a wheel chair. He appealed to the Senate to pass, or
ratify, this U.N. treaty, telling his audience how important it would be for
disabled people around the world. He reminded them that the treaty called for
the same standard of care as the law that he wrote and sponsored some years ago
in the Senate (The Americans with
Disabilities Act). The treaty had been signed previously by President
George W. Bush. More recently it was signed by President Barack H. Obama. It
only awaited ratification by the Senate.

The United
Nations treaty is known as the Convention
on theRights of Persons with
Disabilities.

One would think
the vote would have been a slam dunk, but there arose such a clatter on the
floor, in the form of very brief speeches by rightists that urged Senators to
vote against ratification, that the issue failed passage by a mere three votes.

A bunch of skunk
Republicans voted against it. The horrible stink over the matter remains and
repulses almost all sensible and caring people.

From the outside,
recently presidential candidate and known right-wing-whacko, Rick Santorum, was
sending messages to the august body, with a straight face, indicating that the
treaty “is a direct assault on us and our family!”

Er! What? Heh? “Could
you repeat that part about the thing with the stuff?”

Honest to God?
How would you like to be President of the United States and have to deal with
such stupidity and simple-mindedness?

The vote in the
Senate, you can be sure, was not about urging better care for the disabled
around the world. The vote, in reality, was about the United Nations itself and
this was another opportunity for the crazy right to take a slap at this
international institution that it so despises. Period! End of sentence!

Go down the list
of votes against ratification and you will find the extreme right wing of
American politics represented there in all its inglorious stubbornness. The
list is also one that includes some of the more radical opponents of the United
Nations.

The vote was 61
in favor of ratification and 38 opposed. Of course, it takes 67 votes to
ratify. All the votes against were cast by Republicans. A significant list of distinguished
Republicans voted for the measure, including John McCain (AZ), Richard Lugar
(IN), Scott Brown (MA), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Olympia Snowe (ME), Susan Collins
(ME), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) and John Barrasso (WY).

But, Senator Jim
Inhofe (OK) voted against it because he thought it “impinged upon our
sovereignty.” Excuse me, could you repeat the part about the…. Oh, forget it!

To get a real
sense of why these Senators voted against approving the treaty, you need only
listen carefully to the words of Senator Inhofe: “I have been an advocate of
human rights around the world; however, I do not support the cumbersome
regulations and potentially overzealous international organizations with
anti-American biases that infringe upon American society.”

Uh? Excuse me!
Never mind!

Michael Farris,
who founded and currently chairs an association that defends and encourages
home schooling (HSLDA) was staunchly opposed to the treaty provision and urged his
members to tell Senators to vote against it. He argued that it “would undermine
U.S. sovereignty and erode parental rights.”

What the….? You
gotta be kidding me!

Be aware that
126 nations around the world have ratified this treaty. Those nations include
Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia, Afghanistan, Argentina, Austria,
Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, India and Luxembourg. If you
want to see a complete list of nations that have signed and/or ratified the
measure, you can do so here.

This is all crazy!
A bunch of crazies, in the minority, are dictating to the U.S. Senate. They are
repulsive bigots who will cause the nation nothing but problems in the coming
years because they have the right to filibuster virtually any proposed law that
comes before the body in which they serve.

Full list of the Senators who voted Nay!Here is a list of the 38
U.S. Senators who voted against ratification of the treaty and the one Senator
who did not vote! Please note that every single vote in opposition was cast by
a Republican. The most disappointing “no votes,” as far as I am concerned came
from Grassley (IA), Hatch (UT) and Hutchinson (TX). These are Republican
Senators for whom I hold some sense of admiration. In terms of voting against
the will of the Senator’s own state, I would highlight Rubio (FL) and Johnson
(WI).

Alexander
(TN) Inhofe (OK)

Blunt
(MO) Isakson
(GA)

Boosman
(AZ) Johanns (NE)

Burr
(NC) Johnson
(WI)

Chambliss
(GA) Kyl (AZ)

Coats
(IN) Lee
(UT)

Coburn
(OK) McConnell
(KY)

Cochran
(MS) Moran (KS)

Corker
(TN) Paul
(KY)

Cornyn
(TX) Portman
(OH)

Crapo
(ID) Risch
(ID)

DeMint
(SC) Roberts
(K)

Enzi
(WY) Rubio
(FL)

Graham
(SC) Sessions
(AL)

Grassley
(IA) Shelby
(AL)

Hatch
(UT) Thune
(SD)

Heller
(NV) Toomey
(PA)

Hoeven
(ND) Vitter
(LA)

Hutchinson
(TX) Wicker (MS)

Kirk
(IL) abstained

In the next two
weeks, I will write short (paragraph) biographies of each of these U.S.
Senators, so that I can understand them better and, perhaps, figure out why
they would cast such negative, backwards looking votes.

_________________________

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About Me

I write these blogs to leave behind a full picture of me for my grandchildren. I had no such snapshot of my own grandparents and what they believed and how they thought. Ad Astra, you probably know, is Latin for To the Stars. Without being literal about it, it's my final destination (where I "shall forever sit, triumphing over death, and chance, and Thee, O Time").